ethical labor Quotes

The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get "a good job," but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

What the Church should be telling him [the carpenter] is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.

The two ideas, justice and vocation, are inseparable.... It is by way of the principle and practice of vocation that sanctity and reverence enter into the human economy. It was thus possible for traditional cultures to conceive that "to work is to pray." (pg. 258, The Idea of a Local Economy)

As for a limit to one’s labors, I, for one, do not recognize any for a high-minded man, except that the labors themselves should lead to noble accomplishments.

Nothing should be made by man's labour which is not worth making, or which must be made by labour degrading to the makers.

Tis no sin for a man to labor in his vocation.

A nonviolent occupation is that occupation which is fundamentally free from violence and which involves no exploitation or envy of others.